Lenovo ThinkStation S10

When it comes to out-of-the-box upgrade options, you only get a single 5.25-inch bay and an empty hard drive bay to work with. In place of adding more space for either, Lenovo chose to mount what appears to be a PCI-card retention mechanism of some sort underneath the hard drive bays. To be honest, we're not really sure what it's used for, and the lack of a printed manual for the ThinkStation S10 doesn't help the situation. Whatever function this mystery device serves is too great a sacrifice in upgradeability to make it useful. The free PCI slots, including two free PCI Express x16 slots, are covered by a strange combination of a retention mechanism and a tool-less installation holder. We never thought we'd say it, but we'd prefer screws to this.

The case's rear is adequately stocked with eight USB ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, 5.1 audio, and an optical S/PIDF connection. There's no FireWire 400 port on the back of the case, butone appears on the case's front, along with two additional USB connections. A generic two-button mouse and an ugly media-themed keyboard round things out.

Lenovo's ThinkStation S10 is definitely a workstation machine, but even considering just that, it feels like it underdelivers for the price.

--David Murphy